


Secretaries don't get sick

by soulofaminaanima



Series: Secretaries don't get sick [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Meetings, a little bit meta, a little bit of I don't care about canon, inspired by a tumblr post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 03:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19368970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulofaminaanima/pseuds/soulofaminaanima
Summary: Jaime is bored out of his mind, since there is nothing to do at the office and his secretary called in sick this morning. It's the first day since his brother hired Miss Tarth that she cannot come to work, so Jaime should just let it go.Jaime does not let it go.He decides to pay a visit to his sick secretary, just to annoy her. His day turns out far more interesting as he meets five kids who claim to be Miss Tarth's children.





	Secretaries don't get sick

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by @sassbewitchedmyass on tumlr and her amazing Ser Mom, Ser Dad and the northern kids stories.  
> Go and read them, plz. They are way more funny than I can write and might brighten your day. 
> 
> English is not my first language and I own nothing.

She was supposed to give him those reports today, but the wench had called from home, claiming illness or something. A visit to the hospital, maybe? Jaime couldn’t recall what the receptionist had told him. Whatever it was, it wasn't true, his wench wouldn't 'get sick'. She couldn't. She didn't _do_ sickness.

In the last three months, there hadn't been a single instance his secretary had missed a workday. He could even mail her on weekends too and she would dutifully respond before Monday. And every morning he would walk into the office and she would be there already, sitting at her desk. Or making errands for him around the office.

At first, he had not wanted her as his secretary. Miss Tarth was court and wouldn't smile at his jokes like the previous secretary girls had done. She was to the point and effective, managing every absurd demand he threw at her. She somehow still refused to file for harassment for every little jab about her appearance he'd joked about –  Tyrion was still surprised about that one. And she, of course, never. Ever. Got. Sick.

It’s not as if the company would collapse if Jaime Lannister’s secretary stayed at home for a day. Jaime was very much aware of all the (extra) work the wench did and knew for one that the last successful international meetings were due to her hard and insightful work. But today was just not that interesting.

Miss Tarth might have planned it that way: to only get sick on days when there was nothing to do and Jaime Lannister was bored out of his mind. If she were here, Jaime could distract himself with bothering her. Chat with her about the different sport games they both watched in the weekends, or pester her with something. Maybe she would help him with some unnecessary e-mail, so they could just work together and next to each other for a while. Being around his secretary grounded Jaime somehow, brought his hectic world a little bit more into focus. Sometimes even to the point that he forgot the world outside of his office.

Jaime shook his head, trying to rid himself of these thoughts. Whatever, he didn’t even like the wench and he need not think about her. There were other issues to focus his attention on.

But that wasn’t true. The only thing that could have needed his attention today was a report on the last board meeting. A report that Miss Tarth, apparently, had taken home with her, since he couldn’t find it anywhere.

Unbidden, his thoughts went back to her. What kind of sickness could she have? Was it bad, bad enough for a hospital visit? Would she be sick tomorrow too? Maybe he should go downstairs and ask the receptionist for Miss Tarth’s exact words… Or he could just go and visit the wench himself.

Yes, that was it! Jaime thought.

She has these files at her home, and since he needed them he should go and get them. It was only her fault he couldn’t work today and if she didn’t want him to make a scene, she should’ve just scanned and send them to the office.  That she did not mail them means he caught her slacking in her work. The thought brought a smile to his face; the o so perfect secretary forgot something.

With a quick search he finds her home address in their data base. It’s just downtown in a small suburban area and the cab driver wordlessly drives him there.

 

Miss Tarth lives in a small, but single house with white painted stones and blue window frames. An old wooden bench stands alone on the lawn and a loose gravel path leads to the door. The whole house gives off this beach like vibe and Jaime imagines Miss Tarth sitting on the bench, enjoying the last rays of sunlight of the day. The blue details in the design remind him of her eyes, but the colour isn’t correct. He knows for one, the doorframe is painted too dark; her eyes contain a lighter shade of blue.

Jaime walks up the gravel path and wonders if he should’ve brought some kind of get well basket. It feels stupid to walk up to her house empty handed, and he wipes his hands down his pants. It’s warm here.

He’s only here to retrieve the much needed reports, he tells himself. The fact that the files aren’t that important and that he could’ve asked her to mail them over, isn’t important either. He’s already here and not backing out.  

The doorbell doesn’t ring when he presses it, so Jaime is forced to knocking on the small inlaid window to make his presence known. What if she’s laying sick in bed and can’t hear him? What if she isn’t here, but at some random hospital? What if she fell down the stairs to get to the door and couldn’t get up anymore?! As far as Jaime knows she has nobody in her life to help her; no family, no romantic partner, no friends who live nearby. She could be dead for all he knows and no one-!

The door opens under his insistent knocking.

It’s not the face of his tall, blue eyed, blonde haired secretary who opens the door. Instead, a small girl with black hair and brown eyes looks up at him. Jaime wonders if he walked up to the wrong house and this girl is Miss Tarth’s neighbour. This young girl couldn’t be her daughter, right?

Has the wench ever mentioned a daughter? She kept no pictures at her desk and wore no wedding ring – he would remember _that_ if she did.

He stares at the girl for a long time and only her harsh sounding “What do you want?” gets him to close his mouth again.

“Is your- Is this Miss Tarth’s house?” he manages to ask. The girl gives him a simple ‘Yeah’ before turning around and walking back inside the house, leaving the door wide open as an empty invitation. Jaime steps inside.

Where the outside of the house reminded Jaime of his secretary’s blue eyes and calm demeanour, nothing inside the house reminds him of his wench. His secretary who is always so clean and organised, who labels every file she can get her hands on and allows no clutter at her desk, or his for that matter.

No, this house is messy and well-lived in. There are shoes scattered around the hallway and coats hanging over chairs. As Jaime walks inside the kitchen, he can spot half cleaned breakfast bowls in the sink and crumbs all over the dining table. The refrigerator is covered in little notes, report cards, pictures and photos and there is music playing somewhere from upstairs. Jaime can hear the faint beats of a pop song.

The little girl jumps up on the counter and snatches a piece of bread from the toaster, munching on it while she stares him down again. She gives him no further explanation where his secretary is and Jaime has the sudden thought again he must have walked into the wrong house.

As he takes a step back towards the hallway, the screaming from upstairs starts.

"ARYA WHO TOLD YOU TO TAKE MY- oh we have a visitor." At the top of the stairs a red haired girl looks down on him with a curious look in her eyes. "Who are you?"

"My- uhm I'm your... Jaime?" He wants to tell them he's their mom's boss, but are these girls even Brienne's children? How is he supposed to talk to them? What do kids even know at different ages? Are they aware what a job entails? Do they understand what their mom(?) does when she's not at home? And where the hell is his secretary?!

Jaime tries to gauge the age of the first girl who is still munching on her toast; she's small but she must be around his nephew's age. She's wearing a black tee shirt with a screaming band logo and ripped pants. That means she's a teenager, right? The red haired girl looks a little bit older, if only for her height. She’s wearing some kind of school uniform; squared skirt and a logo he doesn’t recognise on a white blouse. Gods, he knows so little about kids.

"Who the frick is that?" a second head appears in the stairwell above him, this time it's a black haired, blue eyed boy. The face seems recognisable somehow, but the boy only sneers indifferently at him, so Jaime's sure he doesn't know the boy personally. "Right,” Jaime recollects himself, “my name is Mr. Lannister and I'm here to collect some files Miss Tarth couldn't bring to work today. This is the right house, isn't it? You said Miss Tarth lives..."

Jaime's sentence trails off as a fourth(!) kid walks past the small kitchen. How many kids does his secretary even have?! He only notices now they are all around the same age, so they couldn't all be biologically hers, right? The new kid is a boy with brown hair, wearing a nice blue blouse with another school logo, dress pants and fluorescent yellow sneakers. He's taller than the first girl, but probably smaller than the second one.

"Yeah, Brienne of Tarth lives here, I already told you that." The small girl answers him in a deadpan voice and she raises her eyebrow as if she wishes he would physically challenge him on her claim.

"You must be her asshole boss, then huh?" she follows.

Jaime gapes like a fish, who does this girl think she is?? The other kids don’t say a word either, but it catches their attention. They all move into the kitchen, staring at him with different levels of interest.

The red haired girl has this calculating look in her eyes as if she’s measuring his usefulness. The taller boy is still sneering at him and leaning against the counter, playing with a set of pliers. Not threatening at all. The tiny girl pops the last piece of toast in her mouth and gracefully jumps off the counter. The fourth kid keeps the kitchen table between them.

“I’m here because your mother called in sick and I need these files today, so you better go wake her and tell her to come down or something.”

“That’s not true, you don’t need her stock meeting report until Thursday.” The red haired girl counters and how does she even know that? “And Brienne, our mom, isn’t here right now.”

“Há! So you’re saying she’s _not_ sick then?” Jaime points his finger at the girl. She only raises an eyebrow in defence. He could see the resemblance between her, her supposed younger sister and his secretary now.

“Ser Mom is at the hospital with Bran.” The younger boy with sneakers mumbles. _Bran?_ Jaime thinks. Could this be her husband? He’d never seen a ring on her finger, he made sure to look for it.  Plus, he had mocked his wench about relationships many, many times before. She would have mentioned a husband, right? But then she had never mentioned all these kids either. Or maybe this Bran was just another kid, that wouldn’t surprise him either.

“Well, can you call her or something, so she can tell me where the files are?”

“Oh, no need to call her, we know where the stupid files are.” The black haired boy grins.

“So could you give me my _stupid_ files then?” Jaime counters.

“Okay, let’s make a deal then.” The red haired girl says. The eyes of the taller boy light up at that and the younger girl grins like some kind of wolf. The smaller boy sprints away, back upstairs and returns within a minute with a stack of papers in his hands. “ _Stock meeting of Monday the twenty first – records written by Brienne of Tarth_ ” he reads out loud from the first page.

“We’ll give you the reports you need and you’ll promise not to contact our ser mom in the weekends ever again. Work is for weekdays and you’re interrupting our free time with your needless e-mails. ” The red haired girl speaks in an ordering tone.

“Okay.. One, my e-mails are not needless, they are necessary. And two, why would I make that deal? Your mom works for me and work does not hold on Fridays ‘til Sundays.”

“So that means you don’t need those files then?” the smaller boy asks too sweetly, waving the report around. Jaime huffs at that. He doesn’t _need_ those files, but he feels too stubborn to leave this house without them now.

“I promise I won’t e-mail her, but only for this weekend. You give me the files and I’ll promise I won’t tell your mom you let a stranger enter the house when she wasn’t there.”

“Oh, we don’t care about that. If you had meant to harm us, we would just take you down.” The younger girl says with such conviction Jaime has to take a step away from her.

“Sansa,” the shorter boy says, “what about the… the present?” Sansa’s eyes light up at that and Jaime has no idea where this is going. The tall girl – Sansa –  turns back to him.

“Okay, we’ll change our offer. You refrain from mailing this next weekend only and you help us out with another small problem.”

“And what would that problem be?” Jaime asks suspiciously. Where the hell is this conversation going? Since when does he make deals with high schoolers who skip school?

“Well, as you might know, Brienne’s birthday is coming up and we want to order something online for her, but it has to be untraceable. We can’t use our own account for that, since she might accidentally see it.” Wait, his secretary’s birthday was coming up? How did he not know that?

The younger boy continues, unaware of Jaime’s confusion. “If we use someone else’s account, it will stay a surprise and we can just pay you back in cash.”

Jaime takes a long moment to stare at the four children in front of him. They all look serious and down to business. There might be something that resembles his wench in their strong unwavering gazes. That is something he can work with at least. “Okay, deal.”

 

“Heck yeah!” the younger boy swears before sprinting back upstairs. The other three force Jaime to follow and before he knows it, he is seated in front of a computer in one of the bedrooms of the kids.

Judging on the dark green colour palette, the posters of a cool looking knight and castles and the fleeting odour of Axe, this is probably one of the boy’s rooms.

“Okay, what am I ordering?” Jaime asks.

The kids lead him to a writer’s site and have him order some kind of rare, signed copy of the latest story of a fantasy series he doesn’t recognise. The red haired girl sounds offended when he shows no recognition, but her sister only rolls her eyes. “What did you expect, Sansa?”

 Jaime thinks he should be offended at that, but then he would have to be offended at everything these kids say and he doesn’t want that.

“Would you like to look for a mother’s day present too?” Jaime says sarcastically. The kids don’t do sarcasm, so what follows is a lengthy discussion about what kind of present to buy Miss Tarth for mother’s day, even though the feast isn’t even remotely close.

Jaime wants to bang his head on the keyboard, but instead he finds himself nodding along with the arguments of the kids. Sansa argues that Brienne wouldn’t appreciate an expensive gift, but the younger boy – Pod, apparently – wants to make some kind of statement and starts a search for extra pocket money.

“Maybe we can pay you back at a later time.” Pod mumbles as he returns and counts out all their change.

“I start my paid internship next month,” the taller black haired boy raises his chin in defence, “I’ll pay you back double, or with interest, or however you rich people call it, I’ll swear on it.”

“Don’t worry about it, man.” Jaime answers easily as he clicks on the ORDER button for a small silver necklace with a charm in the shape of a sword. Apparently, it’s a thing from the same book series Brienne and the kids adore. “What colour for the charm, red? Blue?”

They squabble about colours for a while, but eventually settle on a tiny blue stone in the hilt of the sword. At the end of the online transaction Pod and Sansa are beaming. They high-five each other and Jaime feels a smile creeping up on his face too.

That smile disappears as al the kids simultaneously freeze; there is a car stopping in front of the house, Jaime can hear voices talking. The four kids immediately jump to action and Jaime is forcibly pulled away from the computer by the two boys. Sansa sets to closing all the tabs and Arya shoves money in the pockets of his jacket. The yelling only ads to the whole chaoticity of this day.

“JUST CLOSE THE WHOLE FRICKIN’ COMPUTER, SANSA!”

“HIDE THE MONEY AND CHECK THE KITCHEN!”

“GET HIM OUT THROUGH THE BACK DOOR, ARYA! DON’T LET SER MOM SEE HIM!”

“GO, GO, GO, GO, POD! ”

There might not be time for that as Jaime hears the doors of the car opening and closing. He instinctively knows Brienne is returning home. Arya swears under her breath and presses the report files in his hand. “Not a word about the presents, say something and your body will never be found.” She says darkly.

Then, she opens the front door and Jaime finally sees Brienne – and when did she change from The Secretary to Brienne in his head?

She doesn’t look like his proper secretary either. She’s wearing a plain tee shirt with a flower pattern and cargo pants that could’ve been bought from the men’s section. Her short hair hangs free and loose and falls in front of her eyes as she moves around to place _another_ teenage boy in a wheelchair. So the count is up to five now, huh? Jaime thinks before Brienne turns the wheelchair around and finally sees him too.

“Mister Lannister, what are you doing here?” Her eyes are surprisingly blue as she stares at him and Jaime prides himself for managing out an answer that doesn’t sound like a lie.

“I came over to collect the board meeting files. Your…children managed to locate them for me.”

Brienne doesn’t comment on the ‘children’ part of his explanation. Jaime feels the two boys and two girls walk towards them, but he cannot make himself turn around. His eyes are focussed on Brienne’s confused face.

“I thought we wouldn’t need those until Thursday?”

“Well, no- I mean I just…Yes.” Jaime stumbles over his answer. The boy in the wheelchair, Bran, raises his eyebrow in the sassiest way possible and it reminds Jaime of the two girls inside. Not for the first time does he wonder about their connections.

“Yes, well I got it now, so I think it is time for me to go back to the office.” He keeps the files in front of his chest, as if he’s trying to use them as a shield. He smiles his famous Lannister smile, the one that never tricked his wench before and wouldn’t do so now.

“Oh, yes of course.” And Brienne finally seems to shake off her confusion. “Do you need me to drive you there? How did you even get here in the first place?”

“No, mister Lannister can walk, can’t you?” the tall boy answers for him. They probably don’t trust him to keep his mouth shut around their mom. “There is a bus station just around the corner.” Sansa backs her brother up.

Jaime nods. He can go back now, he got what he needed from the wench, right? “Will you… will you be back tomorrow?” his voice sounds small, even in his own ears.

Brienne nods. “Chances are. These guys will all be back to school tomorrow, anyway.”

Jaime doesn’t know what to say, but Pod fills the awkward silence with a “There was a power outrage in the building, we got sent home.”

Jaime nods once more, at Brienne and her strange collection of kids and then steps away from the little family. He walks away.

He turns around once before he turns around the street corner. Brienne and her five kids are still standing on the front lawn, talking to each other while Bran is showing off something on his chair. Brienne gives Jaime a small wave before she follows her children back inside the house.

Jaime walks all the way back towards the office, needing some time to think about today. He takes out his phone to check their database for Brienne’s birthday, the information right above her street address: it is indeed creeping closer and Jaime wonders about presents.

He’s not in a hurry to return to his boring office rooms and Brienne’s empty desk. There isn’t anything interesting to do at the office anyway.

 


End file.
